12/28/09

We've Joined the Militia

You and I have joined the militia. You might not have even known it. And the Christmas holiday this year marked another victory for that militia.

The militia are those folks who are trying to defend us from some insaniacs who are bent on murdering us for no particular reason.

Okay, I admit that they actually do have a purpose. Sometimes it's just hard to ascertain what it is, at least from a western perspective. Apparently they want to return civilization to an earlier time (centuries ago, give or take) when all was better with the world, at least in their eyes. It seems we westerners are ruining the regression.

I guess it's human nature, that longing for the "good old days." For them it was when women were chattel and there was no information available to their subjects except what they wanted them to have. I can understand the "good old days" thing myself since I long for a return to a time in this country when the constitution meant what was written in it. A time when people were still free to succeed or fail without the "help" of the elite in government. But back to the point of all this, the militia.

During the founding era of this country, that term was understood to mean the people themselves, at least when they banded together to defend themselves as the need arose. They were armed with whatever weapons they could muster and they asserted their natural right to keep and bear those weapons.

One of the brightest (if not the most well known) of the founders was George Mason. He distilled the definition of that military force down to an understandable concept when he wrote; "what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials."

Our current militia is decidedly the not "well regulated" one hoped for by the founders. By Mason's definition, you and I are already enlisted in this militia, so no formal sign-up is necessary. And it is this type of militia that has had the most success in the local skirmishes of the "Global War on Terror." (At least that's what it used to be called. Some in today's government have taken to calling it an "Overseas Contingency Operation." Apparently, it's a politically correct attempt to portray it as a non-violent war. But I digress.)

When on 9-11 our government failed at it's most fundamental task - that of defending our right to breathe - the militia succeeded. That success was achieved by people like Rick Rescorla at World Trade center, and Todd Beamer and others on Flt 93 over Pennsylvania. It also included scores of other unnamed citizens who saved thousands of lives on that fateful day.

Rescorla saved thousands (about 2700) of innocent lives with his pre-attack planning and unbelievable courage. He also gave his own life during the attack the government failed to detect or prevent. His name is almost unknown today despite an hour-long documentary, "The Man Who Predicted 9-11" on the History Channel.

Somewhat more well known is Todd Beamer (of "Let's Roll" fame) who along with others gave their lives preventing Islamofacists from blowing up the White House with a United Airlines cruise missile. (I challenge anyone to name one of the other heroes he fought along side of without looking it up on the net. I certainly couldn't when I started to write this piece.)

The actions of those people was another militia victory on that day, particularly when compared to the government failure to detect or prevent the plot.

Then, three days ago, on Christmas, it was a passenger on a Detroit bound jet who engaged yet another Islamic fundamentalist soldier as he tried to blow up the plane. Jasper Schuringa, a Dutch filmmaker has been identified in the media as the passenger who subdued the would be terrorist who was attempting to murder over two hundred in his quest for a date with 72 virgins.

Although the idiot martyr-wannabe is reported to have been previously identified as a terrorist threat, and some reports say had no passport to travel here, the government's effort to defend us from him also failed miserably. The reason for the government failure was political correctness, again.

The only thing that saved the day was a poorly designed detonator and our fellow militia member Schuringa. These members of our militia are battlefield heroes as surely as any in our history. They are our fellow soldiers in the never ending war for our freedom.

There is a lesson in all this. It is just this; It's up to us, the people, the real militia. And the lesson applies equally to the effort to halt the domestic threats to our freedoms as well. If we leave it up to the politicians we can expect similar results.

In my opinion, the domestic threat is even more dangerous than the threat from abroad.